05 Sep 2026
issue 05 September 2026
Comments
You could have been forgiven for mistaking Hackney for the site of an El Alamein reunion the other Sunday. Victoria Park was cloaked in a cloud of dust. Tens of thousands of feet had scrubbed the grass clear during All Points East festival and were pounding the scorched earth. People were covering as much of their faces as they could with masks, pulled right up to their eyes, sunglasses blocking the remaining skin. I saw a couple of enterprising chaps wearing pilot’s goggles – and given the state of my eyes as I tried to move around the site, I don’t blame them.
The Californian band Deftones were headlining the park as part of an event called Outbreak, in turn part of a multi-weekend series of events under the All Points East banner. It seems now as though you can’t go out in London at the weekend without stumbling over a music festival. Last summer (I counted until I could count no more) there were more than 100 rock and pop shows in the capital with a licensed capacity of more than 15,000. Leaving aside the issue of whether that’s a sustainable number – plenty of industry people feel it is not – it’s impossible to ignore the issue of what it does to London’s outdoor spaces.
